Immortal with a Kiss

by Jacqueline Lepore

  The girls left in their own good time. I stared after them, Vanessa’s height and swanlike neck making her head visible above the throng in the hall. My breath caught as I noticed the thing trailing after her.

  A few other girls darted to the doorway to take a peek at me but I kept my eyes on Vanessa. My heart stopped for a second or two. The sound of Ann Easterly’s voice, straining to bear some authority as she sent the new wave of students away, faded as a pricking sensation that had no physical cause rode lightly along my skin, and my gut twisted.

  I had seen this before. I can describe it only as something oily and foul, the stain of evil, no more than a smudge of darkness in the air. It was the mark of the vampire that only I, as Dhampir, could see, and it curled like a finger around the graceful curve of Vanessa’s neck. I knew without a doubt she was in terrible danger.

  Dinner at the Rood and Cup that evening was quail, baked with a crisp skin, the succulent flesh underneath running with savory juices. Mrs. Danby served it with baby carrots sweetened in brown sugar and red-skin potatoes as soft on the inside as custard.

  Lord Suddington, dressed in a formal waistcoat and again sporting the elegant touch of a flower pinned to his breast, begged to join me. We chatted amiably while we dined, and he showed himself knowledgeable on topics ranging from horticulture to the theater. He had traveled to the United States, he told me, referring to the young country by the gentrified term of “the colonies” and laughing at himself when I caught him at it.

  I relaxed with him, and pleasant lull of his male attention wove a spell around me. I’d never been a woman to whom men paid much notice, perhaps because in my younger days I was usually paired with the irresistible confection that was my younger sibling, Alyssa. But then Simon, my late husband, noticed me, and I found that I was not unattractive, nor unwanted. Then there was Valerian.

  I started somewhat at the topic I had been so determined not to reflect upon. I realized I had not been entirely successful. While Valerian was not always in my conscious thoughts, he had not gone far, only to the back of my mind. There the memory of him was ever present, along with the dull sadness at all that separated him from me.

  The dining room was busier tonight, and my dinner companion never failed to introduce me to the locals who came by to say hello to him. One young couple, a man of my age with a frothy young wife on his arm, paused to converse. I was amused by their reverent obsequiousness to Lord Suddington. Me, they ignored, until Suddington mentioned my appointment to Blackbriar’s teaching staff.

  The wife regarded me with an arrogant sort of pity that made my blood boil. “Oh, dear. You are to be congratulated, I suppose, although it must be a dreadful thing, having to earn one’s living.”

  Before I could defend myself, Suddington’s eyebrows forked dangerously. “Miss Sloane-Smith runs an excellent school. Its reputation is known down into Kent and all the way up into Scotland. As I am on the board, I am intimately aware of the great service she provides for the children of the best families from all over England.”

  “Some think her too exacting,” the wife countered. I saw she was looking for entertainment, the way some nasty children pull the legs off an insect and watch its mortal struggle. “I heard she is a taskmaster indeed.”

  “Well,” I said in a blithe tone, with an eye on Suddington’s growing ire, “one must have discipline.”

  Suddington shifted his gaze to me, somewhat surprised. I remained sanguine. After all, I was quite used to dealing with her sort of woman.

  My serenity drove the couple off, the wife in something of a huff. “Heavens, what a witch,” Suddington muttered, his eyes following her retreat. And then his mouth moved, and I believe he whispered something. I did not hear it, but I would wager it was not pleasant. That he would take umbrage on my behalf raised a giddy swell of pleasure inside my breast that was girlish and quite unlike me.

  “Come, we must not allow such a spiteful creature to ruin our dinner,” I said. “She is hardly worth our notice.” I indicated the long stone wall and the widemouthed hearth. “I have been meaning to ask you all evening if you know where Mrs. Danby’s mother is tonight? She is conspicuously absent from her chair. Is she well?”

  “Lord save us,” Suddington grumbled. “If only we should find such good fortune as to find Old Madge barred from the room. Her mind is uncertain and she can go off on some, well, rather disturbing rants. But what a kind sort you are to care about her.” He punctuated this remark with a regard of such warm appreciation that I felt myself blush. It was getting to be a common occurrence when I was with him—me blushing; me who never did such coquettish things.

  “You do surprise me,” he said, his voice lowering. “A person of your intelligence paired with compassion such as you possess is a rare thing.”

  I lifted my chin and raised my eyebrows, the picture—I hoped—of skepticism. “You are being quite flattering tonight, and I think it is a game with you.”

  He smiled thoughtfully. His tongue ran slowly across his upper lip in a journey I found fascinating. “Game? Mrs. Andrews, I assure you that while I adore gaming, I am sincere with you.”

  Janet appeared with our dessert, a cobbler for me and the single glass of claret for Suddington. We enjoyed our indulgence in companionable silence. I was filled with a contentment I knew I would not have again for a while. Meals at Blackbriar would no doubt be less fine, both from a culinary and a social standpoint.

  Suddington seemed to be thinking the same. “I must not be deprived for long of our delightful dinners. Promise you will dine with me here at the inn again soon. Do not allow that wretched Sloane-Smith to bully you into giving all your time to the school. You must have your freedoms. And if she should prove disagreeable, you will let me know. My family is old here and I am not without influence.”

  “Miss Sloane-Smith is stern, it is true, but she is nothing as terrible as she is made out to be.”

  His smile slid wider, sultry and mesmerizing. “How charming you are, always so positive and hopeful. It is inspiring, such an attitude. But I do not wish you to be naïve.” He leaned forward, and I felt a wave of lightheadedness come over me. I noticed the male scent coming off him, reaching out like a delicate finger to stroke my sense of smell. It made me shiver with pleasure. “There is cruelty up on the fells, make no mistake. And so have a care, Mrs. Andrews. I would not like it if anything happened to you. I am already anticipating our next encounter.”

  I smiled at the compliment, but it was a shaky smile. Was he warning me? I could not fathom his meaning, or if perhaps this was simply another way of flirting with me. If so, it was decidedly strange, and I did not see what sort of danger he was cautioning me against.

  After he’d taken his leave, I was about to climb the stairs to my chamber—my last night at the inn, as I would be moving on to the staff quarters at the school in the morning—when my gaze espied the hearth blanket used yesterday evening by Mrs. Danby’s mother, lying in a heap on the floor next to her empty chair. I took a moment to go and fold it neatly.

  As I placed it carefully on the seat, my eye caught something irregular in the wall. The mortared stones were all of a size, more or less, except one to the right of the hearth opening. That particular stone was elongated, about as high as my ankle to my hip, and about as wide as my arm was long. It was flatter, its surface unnaturally smooth.

  It nearly looked—and I was sure my imagination was running to the macabre these days—to be the exact size and shape of a gravestone, except the arched end was at the bottom and the straight end was at the top. Peering closer, I saw that there was something written on it.

  I crouched so that I could study the runnels cut into the stone. I made out an N, an I, then something I could not read, then an inverted D. On the other side, a strangely wrought M and another I. I peered closer, puzzled, for the letters made no sense. Then, in a flash of insight, I realized the stone was upside down. The M was a W and the word, or name, rather, was Winifred.

 
; “Are you needing anything before you retire, Mrs. Andrews?” Mrs. Danby said, coming up behind me.

  I whirled, a bit startled. “Nothing, thank you. That was a lovely meal, Mrs. Danby. Is your mother well?”

  “Oh, she is in a state. I am so sorry about last night. I kept her to her bed today.”

  I wanted to ask more, but could not find a way to do so without seeming to pry. Mrs. Danby was clearly embarrassed.

  “I shall retire now. I am almost sad to leave tomorrow, although I am very excited to begin my new position,” I said. “I have enjoyed your excellent cooking and felt quite at home here.”

  Mrs. Danby beamed. “Oh, my dear, I am so glad. We will miss you, but goodness, you aren’t going far. Now, go on and get a good night’s rest. I’ve turned down your bed. Oh, and I’ve had Janet repack your trunk. I told her to leave out the things you’ll need tonight and in the morning, so you’re all set.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said. I had the urge to embrace her, but I refrained. It was a silly impulse; I was always touched when someone fussed over me. It always felt as if I could never get enough of it, having had so little of it in my life.

  I went upstairs and found that Janet had done an excellent job tidying my trunk. I decided I would close it up now and leave the few belongings left over to be packed in a separate valise. I was buckling the straps to the compartments when I noticed a tear in the leather straps that bound the edge of the interior wood frame. I silently cursed. No doubt the handiwork of Mr. Danby’s rough handling. That disagreeable old goat must have dropped it right on the corner, which I could see had been patched before.

  I told myself not to worry over it; the tear could be repaired again. But this was my mother’s portmanteau. My father had given it to her for their wedding trip to France. Her name was written in gold letters on the front, worn away now but with the impressions of the embossing still evident. I liked how large it was, how it opened like a double-hung wardrobe on two sets of hinges to best display all that was packed inside, how I could cram quite an astounding amount in it. The leather was cracked, the brass hinges green with age, but it was infinitely precious to me.

  My fingers smoothed the tear, as if rubbing would mend it, and I noticed something written on the underside of the hide covering. Prying it up, I found words printed in faded India ink, written in a jagged, spidery scrawl.

  Darkling I listen: And for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death.

  My heart did a queer flip and bump. My mother’s hand? I did not know, for I had never seen anything written by her, not even her name on the inside cover of a book. But it had to be hers. My hand shook. It was as if she had reached across time, across space, to speak to me. I struggled for a moment against a surge of emotion, sadness warring with the thrill of hearing something from the woman I had longed to know all of my life.

  But, oh God, what words these were. Half in love with easeful Death . . . I recognized the line. It was from Keats. His Ode to a Nightingale was one of his best-known works, a moody treatise to the night bird, a harbinger of death. He had written it while mortally stricken with tuberculosis. In a grim period in my early adolescence, I had reveled in the lines, finding a match for my pubescent suffering and my unfortunate preoccupation with death. Those had been the hardest years, with Judith at her most domineering. I had found kinship with the suffering poet, who longed for the release of eternal sleep.

  I closed my eyes tight against my raging emotions. Laura, my mother, could not die, though she, too, longed for death—real death, that is. Deliverance from the fate which I only recently learned had been her misfortune to bear. I vowed again—this must have been the hundredth, perhaps thousandth time—to find her, release her, do what I was born to do. To kill her. No. I mustn’t think of it that way. To bring her the gift of death.

  Of easeful death.

  The hour was late. I tucked the flap of hide back into place. Dashing the wetness from my eyes, I undressed and climbed into bed.

  With her so much on my mind, I expected to dream of my mother. I was wrong.

  My sleep was ravaged by something else, something unexpected and raw, even wicked. It reared into my dreams, dreams that whipped through my mind like a tempest. Erotic charges, like a heat storm playing over my flesh, darted and flashed through my nerve endings. Images of lust were cast in my mind in shades of gold and shadow, sequenced with shocking clarity: of me making love with a man.

  I saw myself upon a bed with silken sheets and gauzy bed curtains tangling around me, their movements as sinewy and sensual as my own, touching my naked skin like a caress. Hands—a man’s hands—touched me, trailing in the wake of the silk. I reached for him, my unseen lover, my limbs languid and heavy with desire. His naked torso emerged from the undulating fabric, gleaming in light cast from an unseen fire, and masculine arms reached for me, locked me in an embrace, and held me against warm flesh as hard as Italian marble. Living flame behind alabaster, bringing me both pain and pleasure.

  I tossed restlessly, trying to fend off these images, these feelings. My vision leaned in, pressing heavily down upon me. I saw him more clearly, his dusky skin, smooth, hairless, molded by the muscle and sinew that lay underneath. I lifted my mouth for a kiss and in my dream, my eyes slitted open to see the fair head that bent to me, seducing my mouth with lips red and lush and dark eyes as soft as lakes of mist.

  With a muffled cry, I ripped myself from his arms and came awake. A thin sheen of perspiration dampened my night rail. For a moment, I thought someone had really been in bed with me. I crawled out of the bed like one heaving herself out of a sucking tide. The wooden floor was cold, my toes curling in protest, but the slight shock helped awaken me.

  I held my arms tightly clasped about my chest. My head ached brutally and a burning lump lodged so tightly in my throat I could not swallow.

  The man in my dream had been Suddington. This confused me, even sickened me a little, for I felt disgusted with myself. Was I so fickle that I had already forgotten the feelings Valerian Fox had evoked only months earlier? I had thought I loved him, even told myself I understood why he had abandoned me.

  While I did not love Lord Suddington, I realized his effect on me was heady and exciting. I did not want his laughter nor his strength, did not want to know the depths of thought and feeling that hid deep in his heart. These were things I had once yearned for from Mr. Fox. But with Suddington, my attraction was physical. With a shock—for I had never before been subject to such carnal yearnings—I realized that I had a very disturbing desire for him to touch me.

  I wanted, I admitted to myself, for my dream to come true.

  Chapter Five

  I arrived at the Blackbriar School for Young Ladies the following morning in time for breakfast. The meal proved informal, as the girls came and went from the dining room, which this morning was flooded with a moody purple light. There would be rain later; it was good I had set out as early as I had.

  My belongings were being taken to the modest rooms I was to use, and though I was not hungry—Mrs. Danby having risen early to serve me a hearty breakfast of deviled kidneys, bacon, and eggs before I left the inn—I took a seat at the table by the corner with several members of the staff. I recognized the dance instructor, who beamed a welcoming smile as I headed her way.

  “Are you not eating?” Mrs. Boniface asked as I sat next to her. “You must try the shaved potatoes. They are excellent this morning. Very crisp.” She speared one and placed it in her mouth, savoring it. Her round face beamed.

  She was once again dressed in black. It somehow suited her, made her dignified, not somber. I saw she had once been quite fetching in her youth, and her face still wore the kind of prettiness that remained pink and fresh as she aged. “Did you meet the sketching teacher, Miss Grisholm?” she inquired as she ate more of the potatoes. She turned to the woman on her left. “Trudy, this is Emma Andrews, who is to teach literature.”

  The other teacher sniffed and twisted
her mouth in a smile that did not reach her lips. “You mean try. Victoria had the worst time of it. These girls are ignorant.”

  “Oh, I do not know about that. The third-form girls are coming along beautifully with the Viennese waltz.”

  The deflection was agile, and made without so much as a blink from Mrs. Boniface. I had a sense it was a longtime habit of hers to contend with the sour-faced Trudy. The other woman sitting at the table with us was shy, nodding and smiling sweetly when Mrs. Boniface introduced her as Susannah Graves, the first and second form grammar instructor.

  We were joined by Miss Thompson, who I saw at once was much changed from yesterday. Then, she had made the presentation of a most robust woman. Today, she seemed pale, tired, and subdued.

  Mrs. Boniface must have agreed with my assessment. “What is wrong with you, Agatha?” she asked. “Did you not sleep well again?”

  Miss Thompson frowned but did not reply. The uncomfortable moment was skillfully avoided by Mrs. Boniface, who turned to engage me in conversation. She insisted I address her as Eloise. “Mrs. Boniface makes me feel ancient! Really, Emma, we are to be friends.”

  “Thank you, Eloise.” I paused, both getting used to the more casual form of address and wondering if it were too soon to ask her about what had been much on my mind since meeting her yesterday. Her friendliness emboldened me. “When you mentioned how long you have been teaching here at Blackbriar, I wondered if it were possible you remembered my mother. She attended the school . . . oh, twenty-five years ago or perhaps a little more; I do not know exactly. Her name was Laura Newly.”

  Hearing it put out there, I realized how thin the possibility existed that Eloise would remember one student over a span of so much time. I felt immediately sheepish, a condition not aided by the scathingly incredulous stare I received from Trudy Grisholm.

  Bless Eloise Boniface, for after a moment’s ponder she exclaimed, “Why I do remember her! Yes. Laura Newly. She was a lovely girl. I’d only been teaching a few years and she was one of those you tended to notice. Pretty enough, but very quiet. Nice girl, I recall. I also remember I had thought she’d be an excellent dancer because she had the figure to be light on her feet. But . . . oh, dear, she had no grace whatsoever.”